Following the success of the first edition of the Algerian Paper of the Year Awards, which took place in 2013, anasr.org organized the second edition in 2014. The purpose of the Awards is to recognise and celebrate the achievements of Algerian scientists through a process of nomination, shortlisting and peer review that fully engage the wider community of Algerian scientists and researchers in and out of the country.

The 2014 Awards was run by an awards committee that took charge of the administrative aspects of the Awards. The lengthy and multistage process that starts by nominating the papers for the Awards all the way to identifying the winning papers was kept the same as those adapted for the first edition in 2013.

What was new in the 2014 Awards?

Due to the high quality of the papers nominated for the awards, the awards committee decided that as well as announcing the details of the winning papers, the details of the other top 4 papers across each discipline, which undergo the peer evaluation process, will also be published as “Honorable Mentions”. The aim of this is to acknowledge the efforts and hard work of the authors of the excellent papers that made it to the final stages of the awards. Indeed, across the 5 disciplines for which the awards were given, there was stiff competition between the top 5 papers that were shortlisted for the peer evaluation process and thus it was a sensible option to acknowledge the excellent standards of all the shortlisted papers.

Another novelty of the 2014 edition of the awards was the announcement of the winning papers which made in a event that was held in London. The purpose of this event was to further involve the community in the announcement of the winners. Additionally, organizing such an open meeting to announce the winners of the awards emphasizes the openness of this initiative to the Algerian community abroad and gives the chance to numerous Algerian scientists to present their work. More importantly, the meeting was live-streamed and this gave a great opportunity to Algerians outside the UK, especially those in Algeria, to follow the event. This also provided a unique opportunity to speak to the winners of the awards live and provided them with a platform to promote themselves and their research.

The 2014 Algerian Paper of the Year Awards in numbers

In terms of numbers, the 2014 edition of the Awards was very successful as it attracted a total of 253 nominations, which is a about 34% increase from last year’s edition (see slideshow for more numbers). Impressively, the papers originated from 32 different Algerian universities with the University of Tlemcen contributing the largest number of paper; 26 papers out of the 253 papers nominated for the Awards. Across the 5 disciplines, there was a significant increase in the papers nominated for each discipline with Biological Sciences being the exception where the number of papers remained the same compared to the 2013 edition.

The Prizes

The laureates were awarded a commemoration plaque bearing the name of the authors, the paper’s title and the year of the award. Additionally, each author on the paper received an award certificate. The winners from each discipline were also be given the excellent opportunity to be featured in an exclusive interview on Inspire Magazine, anasr.org’s official magazine and the first Algerian magazine dedicated to scientific outreach in English.

More importantly, besides the symbolic prizes, The Algerian Paper of the Year Awards offer an opportunity to promote the work of Algerian researchers that have been produced at Algerian universities and research institutes. Whether they are a runner up or the ultimate winner, papers were judged by high caliber experts in corresponding fields of research from renowned universities and so have benefited from a constructive reviewing process and the acknowledgement of the wider international scientific community. Interviews with the winners will further promote the work of the awards laureates to national and international readership, therefore increasing the recognition and visibility of their work, its impact, and hopefully open up avenues for potential collaborations with peers from around the world.

What the reviewers said: “The research is well-designed and executed and the paper is well-written. […] This research demonstrates the importance of polyphenol rich-nutrition in protecting stress-mediated damage in late pregnancy and could potentially be translated to humans.” “This paper stands out from all the papers nominated for the 2014 APYAs as it is using techniques and experiments that other papers nominated for the Biological Sciences discipline lack. The importance of the question posed and addressed in what makes this paper exciting”.

What the reviewers said: “A fascinating paper concerned with novel calix[8]arene sulfonic acids. The structure diagrams are well done as are the reaction schemes and the experimental procedures. The biological data is also well presented. I look forward to hearing more about this new calixarenes, in particular their pharmaceutical use”.

What the reviewers said: “The proposed method [described in the winning paper] is very interesting and the experimental results compared with other state-of-the-arts techniques are convincing.”“This novelty [of the method described in the winning paper] is introduced in a consistent Level Set formulation and tested extensively with very challenging sequences. Moreover the paper is well written and easy to follow”.

What the reviewers said: “The authors have done a nice study regarding the structure of the films obtained and their optical properties including band gap calculations. I congratulate the authors for the quality of their results”.;

What the reviewers said: “The authors have done a nice study regarding the structure of the films obtained and their optical properties including band gap calculations. I congratulate the authors for the quality of their results”.

Funding

anasr.org is an independent initiative, developed and maintained on a voluntary basis without external funding by a dedicated and growing team of Algerian scientists and professionals. As a community led initiative, we at anasr.org strive to seek funding only from the community that we aim to serve, in line with our core mission and principles. As was the case with the previous edition, we thus turned to the community to raise the funds needed to sponsor the 2014 Algerian Paper of the Year Awards. The crowd-fundraising process was vastly successful and the community came together beautifully and generously to help us cover the majority of the costs, which included producing the award plaques and certificates, their shipment to Algeria as well as the costs of the winners announcement event.

Acknowledgement

anasr.org team and awards committee would like to thank everyone who joined us in celebrating the winners of the 2014 Algerian Paper of the Year Awards, both at the event in London and those who joined us on the live stream. Thank you again to everyone who nominated their papers for this year edition of the awards, to the shortlisting panels and to the experts across the globe who helped review the papers, to our colleagues here in the UK who delivered very interesting talks as well as to everyone who donated so generously, for helping make this event a success.

Anasr.org will continue with the journey to discover the best of Algerian scientific work and will be running a 3rd edition of the Awards, which will be launched on the 1st January 2015. Further details will be available on this page.

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About the Author

Youcef Mehellou author

Dr. Youcef Mehellou is Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Birmingham, UK. Prior to this, Youcef was a Career Development Fellow at the Medical Research Council (MRC PPU), University of Dundee (UK). Youcef obtained his Ph.D. from Cardiff University (UK) in 2008, which was followed by postdoctoral research work at Arizona State University (USA). He leads anasr.org's Algerian Paper of the Year Awards

The Algerian Network for Academics, Scientists & Researchers is an interaction space to discover, share and inspire Algerian intellect across the globe. anasr.org aims to foster a community of Algerian academics, scientists, researchers and practitioners by developing an independent, community-led platform for exchange, and providing its members with effective means to corroborate their expertise and benefit from their peers inside and outside of Algeria.